Luminous Landscape Forum
Site & Board Matters => About This Site => Topic started by: Les Sparks on September 09, 2015, 11:59:56 am
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Thanks for the great round table discussion. I really enjoyed the discussion that the three of you shared with us.
Wonderful to have something about photography that wasn't related to gear.
It would really be great if you could do something along these lines where you discussed a few of your images i.e. the salon idea that Michael mentioned in the video.
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Let me also add my thanks for that video. I enjoyed watching it and, to some extent, identifying with some of the historical comments. Anyone else develop Royal X Pan 4x5 file in hangers? :)
I'm also jealous of Michael's "salon." I don't like to talk about gear much, but I do like to discuss photographs and photography. There was a group where I live that met occasionally to discuss/critique each other's photographs. Sadly the organizer has had serious health issues, and this has gone by the wayside. And I miss the experience.
Unfortunately the local camera clubs seem to be obsessed by gear discussions, ranging from the inane to the arcane, and competitions. And as marvelous as the Internet might be, it is no substitute for personal interaction.
I suppose I'll have to get my fix vicariously by watching videos of good photographers discussing their work...and reading LensWork.
Tom Frerichs
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Great conversation! Michael is right, it's all-out the craft. Same among sports cars enthusiasts seeking classics and shunning modern digital models.
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With all due respect, I do have one minor criticism of the video: with all the great knowledge and experience of these three wise men, I can't believe the poor lighting/background of this video. Come on guys, don't you have some lighting equipment and some backgrounds? And the color balance, the muddy mid-tone. My goodness.
Richard
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I feel like I could have happily joined in and contributed to the panel discussion. That's because I'm an aging white male baby boomer who picked up the craft of photography around the same time as Michael, Kevin, and Brooks. I too, learned my fundamental craft skills in the film era, and I also made the transition from film to digital. I still try to practice some form of photography that does indeed require some craft-based knowledge. I believe it matters, and I'm pretty sure this panel discussion resonates well with other male baby boomers who visit LuLa.
All that said, the group of folks I'd dearly love to hear from are the millennials. Maybe they are not only embarking eagerly onto the "third wave", they might just be rendering a fourth wave in the near future. I'm just wondering... Do younger generations today care about any of the film era values and approaches to photography? ;) Do they carefully consider the long term durability of the imaging processes they currently use? I have heard from various colleagues that at the college photography level many young people are keen to learn about film and traditional darkroom technique, but is that assertion really true? If so, are these young folks here on LuLa, or on some other website?
best,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com
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Thank you for an engaging conversation. I enjoyed it immensely and found it insightful. I hope these conversations continue and that Brooks appears yet again.
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I too really enjoyed what I heard.
If it is at all possible I would like to see a follow-up - as much as was covered I feel that the topics were by no means exhausted.
More broadly, it is obvious that figuring out what the future might hold is difficult at best, however, unless we know from whence we came, trying to understand the future becomes well nigh impossible.
Although technically my photographic journey started in the 1970's I really regard myself as a child of the digital era since it is only relatively recently that I have been able to indulge what has always been a huge passion. So, I cannot really say that I experienced the challenges of the transition from the film/analog era to the current digital era. Nonetheless I am a great student of history because
I firmly believe that none of us can comprehend the present, much less the future, without understanding where we came from.
So, a big thumbs up for Michael and Kevin (and Brooks) for this illuminating discussion.
Perhaps, as an extension of the concept, more interviews with Brooks and other significant personalities (Jay Maisel is a name that springs easily to mind but there would be no shortage of possibilities) potentially with broad themes in mind appropriate for the individual that is contributing.
My $0.02 worth
Tony Jay
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I'm hoping the follow-up takes some time to talk about indie publishing. Blurb is the tip of the iceberg, we've got people doing hand made editions. We've got people doing letterpress in their basements. It's kind of exploding, according to some sources.
It's true that you're unlikely to get a monograph from done international publisher. But you're most likely than ever to do an edition of 25 or 400 or whatever with some local storefront publisher.
Which is kind of how it was 120 years ago.
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I also wanted to chime in here and express how much I enjoyed the video. You guys provided many interesting things to think about and I hope to see many more video discussions like this that aren't just focused on gear. When you take the gear out of the topic and talk about photography it involves everyone that wants to be creative with whatever cameras they own and I love that.
I love the new changes to the site too. ;D
-Tim
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With all due respect, I do have one minor criticism of the video: with all the great knowledge and experience of these three wise men, I can't believe the poor lighting/background of this video. Come on guys, don't you have some lighting equipment and some backgrounds? And the color balance, the muddy mid-tone. My goodness.
Richard
Not to make excuses, but Air Canada lost Chris' bag the day before. It contained all of our sound gear, and lots more. Fortunately, he had hand carried his cameras and lenses.
We were also shooting in an unplanned location, in a borrowed office, and on borrowed time.
We did the best that we could under the circumstances.
Michael
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I enjoyed Kevin's short discussion of the joy of going through the shoe boxes of old family images his family. This is a joy that I fear that my grand children won't have unless their parents and grandparents take special steps to save some 1,000s of digital images we're taking of them. Saving the images can include 4x6 prints from Costco or small books from many of the book making services. But it will more effort than simply posting images on the web, or in an e-mail, or a smart phone text.
Brooks said that perhaps the important images will be saved for the future because they're the ones that get collected or in book or printed.
But important to who? I think many of us forget that some of our images are important to family and friends and need to be saved too.
Unfortunately, we (or at least I) often save by printing the landscape and other "major" images that end up on my walls and leave the images of friends and family on the web or shared as e-mail.
I really need to make an effort to gather up the friends and family stuff and but it in a book--including the images of our various dogs.
Brooks pointed out the need to find and serve our audiences. And I know that I need to better serve the audience of my family by ensuring that more of the day to day event to event images are made permanent and not left as 1s and 0s on a hard drive somewhere.
Les
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We did the best that we could under the circumstances.
That's all you need say...
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Not to make excuses, but Air Canada lost Chris' bag the day before. It contained all of our sound gear, and lots more. Fortunately, he had hand carried his cameras and lenses.
We were also shooting in an unplanned location, in a borrowed office, and on borrowed time.
We did the best that we could under the circumstances.
Michael
I appreciate your chiming in, Michael. The only reason for my post is that I expect the best, even in the smallest details, from the three of you. I've been browsing Lula for at least 10 years, and have pretty much all issues of LensWork. Needless to say, I'm a big fan.
For some reason, this video reminds me of the opening scene of the movie Smoke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_uXZZRpO-E
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Interesting and informative video and Kevin even gave a mention to the photography magazines over here in the UK :)
Obviously I am no expert as the lighting / colour balance did not strike me as being wrong.
Perhaps the misfortune with Chris's bag made for a less than optimum " technical" recording making it more of a group of friends casually sitting down having a chat.
Hopefully, you will be able to do some more of this type of thing in the future .
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The overall quality of that video segment in no way detracted from the quality of the content!
Tony Jay
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... but I do like to discuss photographs and photography. There was a group where I live that met occasionally to discuss/critique each other's photographs. Sadly the organizer has had serious health issues, and this has gone by the wayside. And I miss the experience.... And as marvelous as the Internet might be, it is no substitute for personal interaction.
Tom Frerichs
Why not start your own group? Especially if there used to be a discussion group that when inactive when the organizer was ill.
Start small and simple -- a meet up at a local restaurant... A group of people sharing a common interest is all that is needed to start a group.
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The overall quality of that video segment in no way detracted from the quality of the content!
Tony Jay
I was engrossed in the conversation and despite the short audio changes I didn't notice anything. The quality of the conversation definitely carried the day.
Michael - more, more, please!!!!!
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Yes the whole thing restored a lot of memories. My group that would meet at my home to explore color developing. Most are gone now, but alas, now there is digital. I still have some undeveloped film in my closet, what is in those.
Thanks for all.
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Really enjoyed the level of discussion about photography as a medium of expression. Would love more articles, videos, etc. like this in the future!
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I once read that the difference between humans and animals is that animals "signal" and humans "tell stories." One of the depressing things (for me) about living in a post-modern, naturalist world-view consensus is the trend away from genuine conversation (story telling) toward a more sterile (but "correct") sending and receiving of "signals" between human beings (which ironically is called "joining the conversation" in post-modern parlance - arrgh...).
Your video conversation took me back 30 years or so... Bravo, Michael and Kevin, for your effort to keep conversation and story telling alive. I thoroughly enjoyed listening in, and felt (as others have expressed here) very much like I wanted to jump in and share as well.
Rand
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I once read that the difference between humans and animals is that animals "signal" and humans "tell stories."
Humans are animals: humans "signal" and humans "tell stories." :-)
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Very interesting discussion. I was especially interested in what Brooks said about the fracturing of our audience. Actually, I think it's always been fractured, just as it has been for any art. Doggerel appeals to a wide audience, but the audience for real poetry always has been small -- smaller now than in earlier times, but always small. There's always been a wide audience for "popular" music, but the great classics -- the music that can give you the kind of transcendental experience that rocks you back on your heels always has been small. Same thing with painting. In the end, the Impressionists won out and the work of their once-popular contemporaries has for all practical purposes disappeared from the face of the earth. Time is the great filter and the good stuff survives, but the audience for any real art always is specialized.
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If you want a different perspective on the Future of Photographer, jump on kickstarter.com.
Search for "photo book"
Sort by "Most Funded" to weed out all the loser projects that won't get funded (or are too new to tell).
There's HUGE MASSES of people out there making HUGE MASSES of Art, putting it into the hands of an audience, making some money, telling their story, getting it out there. Brooks alludes to this, and in generally seems more connected than the other two guys, but I don't think even he's aware of the scale of the thing. Yes it's true, Aperture isn't likely to call you up and offer you a monograph deal.
But the number of people generating small editions of awesome, weighty, serious photographic work is astronomical. There are 100s of credible projects active on kickstarter right now, and that's just one slice of the picture. There are other crowdfunding sites. There are small storefront publishers all over the place. There are people self-funding.
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If you want a different perspective on the Future of Photographer, jump on kickstarter.com.
Search for "photo book"
Sort by "Most Funded" to weed out all the loser projects that won't get funded (or are too new to tell).
I just did that.
At the time I am writing this, there are 156 photography projects on kickstarter (not only books, all photo projects), of which only 34 are photobooks (https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/photography/photobooks?ref=category_modal&sort=popularity). I'll compare with related categories: in the "publishing" category (basically: books), there are 588 live projects. In the "film and video" category, there are 720 live projects. The most popular category appears to be the "technology" category, with 769 live projects.
I am not sure I am using the search function correctly, but it seems that "photography" is under-represented. I also had a look at the projects, it seems that the only projects that are actually funded are either photographs from photographers which are already famous (like this one (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kirstymitchell/the-wonderland-book?ref=category_popular) or projects for photographers (like this one (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pmkane/lightbox-photography-cards-macro-edition?ref=category_popular), a deck of card representing assignments).
Maybe it is me, but I don't see why you believe that photography is popular on kickstarter.
Now, where I agree with you is when you write that photo forums have a very narrow view of photography. There are plenty of photographers who take pictures completely different to what one sees here and, apparently, are quite successful with them.
Edit: I found out I was using the search function incorrectly, there are more projects than the few I found.
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I got more like a thousand, but possibly I'm the one using the search function wrong.
Even 34 is a big number. If kickstarter is driving, I don't know, let's say 50 monographs a year, that represents a substantial difference from the picture you get at Barnes & Noble.
Kickstarter is just one slice of the indie publishing world. If your 34 is the right number, it still suggests many hundreds of titles a year finding their audiences, as a credible lower bound.
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Thing is, what's the point of getting published by a small company? The only thing more self-defeating (IMO) is self-publishing. Ego trips are great, but hardly so when they end up costing you money or otherwise remain practically invisible. The real deal or zero, in my head. Doesn't it matter at all that getting published by a main publisher is more than just a book, that it's a huge vote of confidence in the photographer's work? That's the same buzz as from landing a prize commercial assignment. Just imagine the feeling if you landed the next Pirelli! I wish.
I've put together two photo-books, but unless some major publisher bites, I'm just as happy they stay on HDs. In my own world of references, going minor is the equivalent of doing a calendar for the local florist as compared with producing one for a major whisky company. Why bother?
Black & White, the glossy magazine begun a decade or two ago for 'collectors', yeah, collectors, went through at least one ownership change during the years I used to buy it. I suppose that was pretty much pre-web days (or so it felt to me - I was a very late electronic life addict) and perhaps it had greater relevance originally than magazines have today, but for my own strange and somewhat traditional tastes, I'd still rather have a nicely-printed book or magazine to enjoy, in my hands, useable anywhere I choose to see it, than surf (the web) in my office. Portable devices? A cell phone's too wee, and a small computer or pad far too much of a nuisance.
I hadn't thought consciously before about photo-books appealing only to other photographers; I'm not sure that's the full story at all. There are many about decoration, architecture, yachts, antique cars, Mediterranean gardens etc. etc. an endless list. If the three gents in the vid. are speaking exclusively about books restricted to the products of a photographer's ego, then they are probably right on the money. But books using photography is something very much else.
Rob C
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That's because you've got the old school mindset, Rob.
In the old days a book meant a monograph from Aperture that might sell a few thousand copies. There really were no other options. You could sell your services, your prints, or monographs published by majors.
These kids are running around doing small editions. They're making more money on an edition of 200 than you'd see on your hypothetical Aperture monograph.
They're pre-selling the entire edition, or at any rate enough to cover expenses, before they spend a dime.
I hand build editions of three which I do not sell. Making money isn't a goal for me, I have a good job, I don't need to make money.
That's just two points on a spectrum. You can dismiss it as self publishing and therefore irrelevant, I suppose, but that's pretty arbitrary. Painters are all self published too and they seem to have done some things that are worthwhile.
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I thought one of the most prescient points in the video was one Kevin made about having stacks of hard drives backed up on raids with thousands of images - what will happen to them in ten years? (@~27:30) What will happen to any of our work after we pass on? Who do you know with the time, money or interest to wade through your work looking for gems to keep? Then what do they do? Do they know how to "get them out" of that hard drive in a way that gives your work longevity?
I'm making this point because, I'm sure we can agree that we don't want our life's work to die with us, which is exactly what will happen if we leave it in electronic form.
I have always advocated to my friends, family, students and workshop participants: print your photographs, put them in albums, print-mat-frame your photos or, better yet, make photo books. Make them of your family; make them of your photographic passions. That way, your work will be with your family after you visit that great Lightroom in the sky. And it will be presented in a way you can be proud of.
Yes, it's more stuff and yes, they might just toss it after you go, but they won't do so without one last look. And maybe they might just keep a few to remember you by and all the gazillion hours you spent doing what you love.
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All the digital archiving technology in the world won't make it so that anyone will look at your pictures. The best they can accomplish is to make it so they can. Reality is, alas, they probably won't.
I stick to making perhaps a couple dozen worthwhile pictures a year, and printing those. I see no need to travel the world and make thousands of exposures.
But then, I have no particular love for the process. Many people do, for them much of the joy comes before the shutter press. More power to 'em. Travel. Shoot. Love life and live large!
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I got more like a thousand, but possibly I'm the one using the search function wrong.
Even 34 is a big number. If kickstarter is driving, I don't know, let's say 50 monographs a year, that represents a substantial difference from the picture you get at Barnes & Noble.
Kickstarter is just one slice of the indie publishing world. If your 34 is the right number, it still suggests many hundreds of titles a year finding their audiences, as a credible lower bound.
That is not what I am seeing on kickstarter. What I am seeing there is that photobooks don't sell. But I may have used the search function incorrectly. Can I have a link to a few successful kickstarter photobooks, say a dozen?
Edit: I found out I was using the search function incorrectly, there are more projects than the few I found.
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All the digital archiving technology in the world won't make it so that anyone will look at your pictures. The best they can accomplish is to make it so they can. Reality is, alas, they probably won't
That is so sad and so true at the same time.
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I am disinclined to start laboriously cutting and pasting links.
I go to kickstarter.com
I click Discover and put in "photography book" (no quotes) in the search box.
This turns up 1,700 or so results.
Filtering that to results that are at least 100% funded leaves 556 projects. Not all of them are actually photo book projects but a quick skim suggests that most of them at least include printing a book.
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That is not what I am seeing on kickstarter. What I am seeing there is that photobooks don't sell. But I may have used the search function incorrectly. Can I have a link to a few successful kickstarter photobooks, say a dozen?
I got 866 project when I search "photobooks". Sorted by "most funded" the number 12 is Armenian Diaspora Project, it has 513 backers who pledged $61,138.
The search link: https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?term=photobooks&sort=most_funded
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Now I understand. Kickstarter was only finding a subset of the photobooks for me, apparently because I clicked the "discover" button earlier.
So, apparently, hundreds of photographer manage to finance photobooks on kickstarter. How does that work? What is the difference between projects which are not backed (there are many) and projects which attract hundreds of backers?
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We have published two articles here on Luminous-Landscape on this . . .
https://luminous-landscape.com/self-publishing-a-landscape-photography-book/
https://luminous-landscape.com/self-publishing-a-photography-book-part-deux/
Both books have been published. I have backed both books as I do a number of different projects on Kickstarter.
Kevin Raber
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As far as I can tell the most archivally stable method of preserving your images is to put them on paper. Yes, it needs to be the right paper with stable inks or one of the known archival chemical photo processes, but storing your photos in bits and bytes will consign them to oblivion as your heirs try to sort through your belongings on that eventual day. Maybe that's a good thing? Maybe it's not.
Brooks Jensen has been a longtime proponent of the physical object as the ultimate work of art, whether it be in the form of a single print, a folio or a form of book. He is no Luddite though and happily and enthusiastically creates and distributes work in PDF format and provides step by step instruction for doing it yourself.
I remember the first time I heard Brooks Jensen reference Alvin Toffler's "Third Wave" and I began rolling my eyes but I continued listening and Brooks made some really good points using the term "demassification". It was his argument to proceed with finding your audience and distributing your work at a price that encourages people to buy and share your work. Don't wait for a book deal to come your way, because it won't. Brooks Jensen has made a life and career of promoting photography as art, others as well as his own. It would be a disservice to say Brooks Jensen is smart and an entrepreneur even though he is both of those things, more importantly he is a man on a mission and he is really worth listening to.
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"Serious" photographers often pooh-pooh Instagram and Tumblr and the like.
But these venues are where much of the action happens.
Set up your Tumblr blog. Start publishing your work. Your best work. Social network your ass off. Comment, follow, friend, whatever the local idioms are.
Find your audience and help them find you.
When you've worked your way up to a few thousand, poll them to see if they'd buy a book. Be specific, give options.
Divide the numbers by ten.
If they still work, launch a kickstarter to raise funds and promote it heavily with your fans. Have cheap electronic rewards, but make them personal, as well as simply copies of the book, to monetize the fans who don't have much money or who simply don't want the physical thing.
If you get funded, print.
Roughly, anyways.
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I am still trying to understand.
I read the articles, and a few others. If I understood correctly, one of the main factors which is necessary for a successful kickstarter campaign is to be able to reach enough people. Rule of thumb figures: for a photobook print run is about 1000, one needs about 400 backers to break even. To get 400 people to back a project on kickstarter, one needs to contact at least 10 times that amount of people (not everyone who is contacted will go to the project on kickstarter and not everyone who actually goes to kickstarter will back the project. The article (https://luminous-landscape.com/self-publishing-a-landscape-photography-book/) talks about a 8% "conversion rate".
So, to be able to actually publish a photobook on that system, one needs to advertise it to at least 4000 people, and that is an optimistic assumption. How does one do that?
I have seen two suggestions: tumblr and facebook. Obviously, to reach that minimum number of 4000 people, one would need to have 4000 facebook "friends" (or tumblr "followers"). Do you? I don't. I don't actually know anyone with so many facebook friends.
So I am still trying to understand, but I don't think I do.
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1000 books is an enormous number. That's a pretty decent sales figure for a nice book from a major publisher. It's not one of the 'hits' but it's a respectable number for the basic catalog.
Think more like 200. Or 100.
But yes, you need 1000s of fans. You can get them, but it's work. Hey out there on one or two social media platforms and network your ass off.
Find people who seem as if they might like your pictures. Friend them or follow them. Comment on their pictures. Favorite, like, +1 them. But comment as well. You need to reach them on a personal level.
Spend an hour a day networking, for a year. Make genuine friends out of people you want to follow you. It almost doesn't matter what you shoot.
Nudes are the easiest, though.
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1000 books is an enormous number. That's a pretty decent sales figure for a nice book from a major publisher. It's not one of the 'hits' but it's a respectable number for the basic catalog.
Think more like 200. Or 100.
I don't agree. I know the printing costs. You have two choices:
-small run print, and then each photobook costs so much to print that you will not make any profit (but you can make only 100 indeed)
-normal printing press, the costs are then much smaller so that you can make a profit, but you need at least 500 copies. And you might as well print 1000, because it is almost the same price as 500.
But yes, you need 1000s of fans. You can get them, but it's work. Hey out there on one or two social media platforms and network your ass off.
Find people who seem as if they might like your pictures. Friend them or follow them. Comment on their pictures. Favorite, like, +1 them. But comment as well. You need to reach them on a personal level.
Spend an hour a day networking, for a year. Make genuine friends out of people you want to follow you. It almost doesn't matter what you shoot.
You are not talking from personal experience and neither am I, so I think our opinions are to be taken with a grain of salt. I don't think an hour a day would be sufficient to get this kind of network, I think it is more like a second full time job. And, personally, if I had the kind of audience that would allow me 400 sales regularly, I would sell them better stuff than photobooks.
In the meantime, I have looked at instagram. It seems that if you want to be considered as "influential" on instagram, you will need something like 30000 followers at least ("mustafaseven" has 1 million...). So, maybe 4000 is very optimistic.
With these kind of numbers, we are not talking about "networking around one's friends". We are talking about a full-time marketing job. That is completely different. And, because of the sheer number of followers, you will also need pictures tailored to mainstream tastes.
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That's because you've got the old school mindset, Rob.
In the old days a book meant a monograph from Aperture that might sell a few thousand copies. There really were no other options. You could sell your services, your prints, or monographs published by majors.
These kids are running around doing small editions. They're making more money on an edition of 200 than you'd see on your hypothetical Aperture monograph.
They're pre-selling the entire edition, or at any rate enough to cover expenses, before they spend a dime.
I hand build editions of three which I do not sell. Making money isn't a goal for me, I have a good job, I don't need to make money.
That's just two points on a spectrum. You can dismiss it as self publishing and therefore irrelevant, I suppose, but that's pretty arbitrary. Painters are all self published too and they seem to have done some things that are worthwhile.
Absolutely, Andrew, and because of that I look at the mathematics and shake my head at anything but that lucky lightning strike. When I was in business there were often people - for a while - coming up asking me to do cheap shoots for better work 'once I'd proved myself'. Right. So they were doing me a favour instead of going to somebody better-established at that time.
I'm not into long-term planning at my age; if something can't happen realistically soon, unless it involves family, it's of no value to me.
I have no interest in any of the social media stuff; it's a psychological miracle I'm here today, and I don't look upon this site as social media, whereas others may. The thought of messing about spending even more hours on an uncomfortable typist's stool, engaging with every half-wit who wants to click a button and become a 'friend' is what I consider one of the easily available first-steps to insanity or, at the very least, eventual downgrading of one's own mind.
New isn't necessarily best.
But as usual, it may well be a route to wherever those who use it desire to be.
Rob C
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Have you looked at blurb's offerings?
You can do a nice looking trade book for under $10 a copy. Sure, a gigantic heavy coffee table book is gonna run in the general area of $100 a copy, with essentially no upper bound if you just keep adding pages. If you've pre-sold enough volume, you can switch over to their offset service and go quite a bit cheaper per unit.
Basically there is a quality and a size for any price point you can dream up over about $2.00 a copy.
The point is not that blurb is great, the point is that there are a dizzying array of options. You can try for a relatively high volume cheap book. You probably COULD sell 1000 copies of a trade book at $10 a pop, looking to clear a couple bucks a book yourself (not including labor, ha!). You might be able to sell an edition of 25 or 40 high end books at $500 a pop. This is basically the Victorian model.
With print on demand and kickstarter, you could do both.
Back me at $500, get the coffee table book, the calendar, and the trade book, OR a folio of 10 8x10 prints, OR whatever.
At $25, you get the trade book.
At $50 you get the trade book and the calendar.
At $100 you get the trade book, the calendar, and an 8x10 print.
Etc..
As for personal experience, I have a flickr account with 653 followers, and I have verified that I can make that number go up more or less at will by spending time searching, commenting, and following people. The account is now largely fallow. However, over the approximately 1 year (I think) that was experimenting, active, and had a few hundred followers I got 2 or 3 queries about whether I would do a book. Those queries, I feel, represented a pretty accurate count of books I could sell immediately. So, I estimate roughly one sale for every 100 to 300 followers, let's say. On that account, with that content. Your mileage may vary.
So, I've printed a bunch of things at blurb at various price points. I've experimented with social networking. What I have not done is put the two together, for that I must rely on looking at funded kickstarters. They seem to have done essentially things I have done, more vigorously and at more length.
They probably had a bit of luck. It's not a sure thing, by any means, but it's a pretty well defined path, and you can operate it to minimize out of pocket costs.
I was shooting nudes, which, as I said, makes things a lot easier.
There's no reason the same ideas wouldn't apply to any genre, though. There's an audience for anything.
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I have absolutely no problem with how you define success, Rob. If it's a major-label coffee-table book for you, then that's what it is. And you're right, that's not going to happen.
People who own horses are often lovely people, and I wish them all the best. Reality is, they're not going to get a job as a hansom cab driver, because that day is past. And that's OK. There's nothing wrong with saying 'Man, I wish I could drive a hansom cab, but that's not going to happen, those days are past'. Put in those terms, I kinda want to drive a cab too. Hmm. The part where you get to be poor and overworked doesn't sound like fun, but still!
It's casting it as the end of transportation (something I should note you are NOT guilty of, Rob!) that's problematic. People are still being transported and transporting themselves just fine, thanks.
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Have you looked at blurb's offerings?
You can do a nice looking trade book for under $10 a copy. Sure, a gigantic heavy coffee table book is gonna run in the general area of $100 a copy, with essentially no upper bound if you just keep adding pages. If you've pre-sold enough volume, you can switch over to their offset service and go quite a bit cheaper per unit.
Basically there is a quality and a size for any price point you can dream up over about $2.00 a copy.
That is not the prices I paid for a small photobook without frills on blurb.
Basically, my understanding of the price structure for printing photobooks is that either:
-you don't have the 4000 friends we were talking about and the price of prints implies that you cannot make a profit or
-you have this many friends, will be able to sell a few hundred books, can use classical printing processes ("offset") and can make a profit.
That is for photobooks. Tradebooks are cheaper, but we are talking about photography here.
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Have you seen one of the trade books? I have. The $1.69 cheapest one has reproduction a little better than a newspaper on better than newspaper paper. This may not be acceptable for your needs. There are many tiers. Pick one. Or don't.
Look, if you're just going to dismiss everything as an unacceptable tradeoff, then, yes, it's impossible.
This isn't stopping the rest of us.
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The real problem with self-publishing is all the jobs you have to do -- not counting the actual taking and processing of the photos, which you'd do anyway, you still have to work through the layout of the book, deal with the book-production people, write any text, figure out the jacket, etc., and then deal with the financing and marketing and distribution. You have to ask yourself, for what? Sell five hundred copies for a profit of $2 each, thereby making from all that work about what the average American family makes in a week? IMHO, you'd be making far less than the minimum wage, if you did the book right. I think it would be better to put up a website with some kind of cut-and-dried software where you could put photos up any time you wanted, and take them down when you wanted. You could link that to a Facebook page, where you do your own (free) promotion as the impulse strikes you. Okay, it's not a book, but in most of the book-publishing world, a self-published book isn't a book, either, except perhaps technically. A "real" book is one that has been reviewed by editors and publishers and has been deemed worthy of them investing *their* money. That's why self-published book are called "vanity" publications.
I know a couple of people who successfully self-publish, but in both cases, they already have a solid retail outlet and their books are designed to piggy-back on that. I know more (very good, fairly successful, in today's terms) writers who actually publish with large companies, but only once every three years or so. They get contracts in the $100,000 range which sounds, on the surface, pretty good...but which works out to about $30,000 per year for pretty hard work, with no benefits, or about half of what a public school teacher makes in my area.
The book-publishing business is brutal, which is why so many small publishers go broke. The only reason to get into it, as a photographer, are the publicity (maybe) and for the ego massage (and massaging yourself won't do much for the ego.) Ain't gonna be no real money.
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Yep. There's no money, no real money, in books. Hasn't been for ages. Writing books, or whatever. You haven't been able to do more than eke out a living for 50 years or more, unless you're one of the very very few. In which case you have a nice middle class living.
The difference in this modern age, in these degenerate times, is that there are a thousand options. There's a lot more ways to do the thing that people do when they're making books.
Pulling together a photo book ain't that hard. Just keep the design simple.
The changes, in short, are all to the good.
It's hasn't been about the money for decades. Is it 'mere ego', 'mere vanity' to share your work with a handful of people who love it, and make a few bucks at the same time?
Maybe. Feel free to dismiss it as such. But it's not like the 1980s were some magical time when things were better. They weren't. They were worse.
If you want to make money, go to work as an investment advisor.
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Self-publishing a photography book 15-20 years ago was much harder and more expensive than now. You needed to print several thousand copies to make it worthwhile.
However, one thing which was not mentioned here, is that in the past, there existed many independent bookstores which actually purchased the books, put them on shelves, and invariably sold them. It was actually possible to make money by being the book maker, publisher, and distributor. Not anymore! In the last ten years, Amazon and other online book megastores killed most independent bookstores and gift shops, the best selling channels, where the readers could see and touch the books. The few remaining bookstores sell now used books only for a few dollars, so in effect there are at present no stores which would display and sell your books.
Selling physical books online is also not simple. On one hand, if you sell them directly from your website, you can pocket the profit which otherwise would go to a brick-and-mortar bookstore, but the relatively high shipping charges will make it harder for the purchasers (especially competing with Amazon free shipping offers), so if you decide to absorb some of the shipping costs, there goes the "retail" profit.
So I must echo the previous two posts that with a few exceptions, there is no money in publishing or selling books anymore.
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Have you seen one of the trade books? I have. The $1.69 cheapest one has reproduction a little better than a newspaper on better than newspaper paper.
I had not realised that the quality of these cheaper books was acceptable for photography. I will look into it.
Look, if you're just going to dismiss everything as an unacceptable tradeoff, then, yes, it's impossible.
I am not saying it is unacceptable or impossible. I am pointing at an ignored fact of the "kickstarted" business model: it can only be used by the kind of people able to get thousands of facebook friends (or twitter followers, etc...). Of course there are numbers of such people and there are successful kickstarter campaigns. But there are consequences and, given that you complain on your blog about photography as shown on the Internet on an almost daily basis, I am surprised that you don't see what they are.
Getting thousands of followers is not a photographic ability, it is a social ability and a very peculiar one as well (the ones who can do that are not necessarily "social" in real life). And I think that the people with that ability will also tend to produce a very limited subset of photography. Basically:
-they will need to have tastes shared by lots of people and
-they will need to produce a continuous stream of pictures on a daily basis.
That, in turn, constrains the kind of pictures they will produce to exactly the kind of pictures you are complaining about on your blog. The difference is striking when you compare, for example, to photographers catering to the art market via galleries and exhibitions.
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The real problem with self-publishing is all the jobs you have to do -- not counting the actual taking and processing of the photos, which you'd do anyway, you still have to work through the layout of the book, deal with the book-production people, write any text, figure out the jacket, etc., and then deal with the financing and marketing and distribution. You have to ask yourself, for what? Sell five hundred copies for a profit of $2 each, thereby making from all that work about what the average American family makes in a week? IMHO, you'd be making far less than the minimum wage, if you did the book right. I think it would be better to put up a website with some kind of cut-and-dried software where you could put photos up any time you wanted, and take them down when you wanted. You could link that to a Facebook page, where you do your own (free) promotion as the impulse strikes you. Okay, it's not a book, but in most of the book-publishing world, a self-published book isn't a book, either, except perhaps technically. A "real" book is one that has been reviewed by editors and publishers and has been deemed worthy of them investing *their* money. That's why self-published book are called "vanity" publications.
I know a couple of people who successfully self-publish, but in both cases, they already have a solid retail outlet and their books are designed to piggy-back on that. I know more (very good, fairly successful, in today's terms) writers who actually publish with large companies, but only once every three years or so. They get contracts in the $100,000 range which sounds, on the surface, pretty good...but which works out to about $30,000 per year for pretty hard work, with no benefits, or about half of what a public school teacher makes in my area.
The book-publishing business is brutal, which is why so many small publishers go broke. The only reason to get into it, as a photographer, are the publicity (maybe) and for the ego massage (and massaging yourself won't do much for the ego.) Ain't gonna be no real money.
Exactly the point.
It echoes precisely what I have repeatedly said over different posts relating to motivation: the buzz is two-fold, in that you get the joy of the work and also the equal one of the assignment.
For me, they really are pretty much equal in value. For anyone doing it for a living, money aside, it's the fact that someone thinks highly enough of what you do to put their money on you to do something good for them. Confidence in you, the shooter, is a fantastic feeling and a challenge that brings out the best you know how to give. This week I have had two very important compliments paid me, one for some writing and another for images. As these come from people whose own output I genuinely admire greatly, they mean more to me than pretty much anything that's come my way since I retired too many years ago.
You can't get that buzz from self-promotion: it has to come from outwith yourself.
Because something can be done, it doesn't necessarily mean that it supplies what everyone might be searching for in their life.
I'm not denying anyone the pleasure of doing it themselves; if that's what you need, then go for it. It just doesn't do it for me.
Rob C
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If you want to make money, go to work as an investment advisor.
I am trying to think of the number of photographers that I think might be able to make a living from publishing books. I have a sneaking suspicion that presently and in times past that number is near zero. Now, maybe some successful gallery or commercial photographers have had successful books, but that seems like it would be merely a bonus added on to the primary source of their income. Off the top of my head, Greg Heisler or Dan Winter have both had very successful books but those books could not have been a primary source of income and these were books that captured an entire career of the artist!
So I take a deep breath and say to myself, why should I lament the slim to nonexistent margins of book publishing when virtually no one, not even the greats can make the numbers work in a meaningful and enduring way (I might have one or two people in mind that might make it work well enough but its probably very rare.)
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Bailey has done forty (he says) of them (books!); listen to what he says about it here:
http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2013/09/05/david-bailey-exhibition-national-portrait-gallery-baileys-stardust/gallery/1023192
Far more than just about books, and quite revealing of the guy's mind.
Enjoy,
Rob C
Hell's bells! Seems the video part has now vanished! What a load of nonsense - what in hell are they protecting, their own PR?
I found it still possible by going to Google and writing:
David Bailey Alexandra Shulman Interview
Got me back in.
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Excellent interview, thanks :-)
To refer to the other thread on portraits, I notice he mentioned June Newton, aka Alice Springs... who invariably shot with available light.
Absolutely nothing classical, but great connection with her subjects.
Oh yeah, 40 books, sold out, typical print runs of 5000, 3000 for the really quirky one shot in 8 minutes, 60,000 for the Stardust exhibition book!
But that's still only 200K books in a life time...
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Getting 1000s of followers is just work. Simple, straightforward, work.
And I am sort of sad that you think my blog is mainly complaining about photography on the internet. People, sure, but I'm a big fan of vernacular photography, which is virtually all of it on the internet or otherwise.
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...Getting thousands of followers is not a photographic ability, it is a social ability and a very peculiar one as well..
You don't need to have 1000s of friends/followers to be successful on Kickstarter. The key to Kickstarter success is having a high quality promotional video.
Here's an (slightly long) example: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/773814430/this-is-nowhere/description
Once you have the video, ask a few friends to share/like them on Facebook, Twitter or any number of other photography social media sites. That's about all the marketing you have to do.
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You don't need to have 1000s of friends/followers to be successful on Kickstarter. The key to Kickstarter success is having a high quality promotional video.
Here's an (slightly long) example: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/773814430/this-is-nowhere/description
Once you have the video, ask a few friends to share/like them on Facebook, Twitter or any number of other photography social media sites. That's about all the marketing you have to do.
Pardon me if I do not understand. As an example that one does not need 1000s of followers to be successful on Kickstarter, you take... Jeremy Koreski, who has 30500 Instagram followers? https://instagram.com/jeremykoreski (https://instagram.com/jeremykoreski)
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Getting 1000s of followers is just work. Simple, straightforward, work.
It certainly requires work, but work alone is not sufficient and that is my point. Amongst others, it also requires one to produce the kind of pictures that will attract crowds, for example.
Besides, what about an estimation of the time it actually takes? Because devoting your time to any given activity will have consequences. My feeling is that the amount of time needed to get 1000s of followers amounts to many hours a day, every day. That in turns means that:
-the same people will have less time for actually taking pictures
-probably have little social life beyond the internet (which influences the kind of pictures as well)
-will be selected amongst people having extra time (so no successful advertising photographer or no working mom, for example, and not the kind of pictures these people take either)
-will be selected amongst the people who are either not bright enough to realise that this a time sink with very little financial gain or amongst the people not interested in financial gain, etc...
And I am sort of sad that you think my blog is mainly complaining about photography on the internet. People, sure, but I'm a big fan of vernacular photography, which is virtually all of it on the internet or otherwise.
I did not intend to criticise your blog!
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Besides, what about an estimation of the time it actually takes? Because devoting your time to any given activity will have consequences. My feeling is that the amount of time needed to get 1000s of followers amounts to many hours a day, every day. That in turns means that:
Yes indeed, and that's not taking into account the mental strain of dealing with all of those people!
LuLa is apparently one of the better places in which to browse, and it doesn't take long to realise that even here, on this little island of semi-sanity, there are folks who feel obliged to switch off other folks!
Imagine the life one would lead having to try and be all things to all men! I say 'men' because I imagine that women, in general, have better ways of spending their time than in a world of fantasy.
;-)
Rob C
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An hour a day for a year will get you 1000 followers, I think, based on my experiments.
At some point there's a 'liftoff' effect where you've got a big enough community of followers that friends of friends start finding you by themselves in significant numbers. This is probably pretty variable but my experimental account was self sustaining around 500. I imagine that if you get a couple thousand yourself it will generally grow from there by itself if you keep the content flowing.
As for my blog, criticize away, I don't mind! I am just a little sad because I think I'm usually pretty upbeat and apparently that's not really coming through.
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An hour a day for a year will get you 1000 followers, I think, based on my experiments.
At some point there's a 'liftoff' effect where you've got a big enough community of followers that friends of friends start finding you by themselves in significant numbers. This is probably pretty variable but my experimental account was self sustaining around 500. I imagine that if you get a couple thousand yourself it will generally grow from there by itself if you keep the content flowing.
So you think it is relatively easy. Frankly, I don't know. Maybe you are right and all it takes to grow a number of followers sufficient to manage a successful kickstarter campaign is to work at it in one's spare time for a couple of years, which should be quite doable for anyone.
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Pardon me if I do not understand. As an example that one does not need 1000s of followers to be successful on Kickstarter, you take... Jeremy Koreski, who has 30500 Instagram followers? https://instagram.com/jeremykoreski (https://instagram.com/jeremykoreski)
But many successful projects in Kickstarter don't have that kind of following. I guess I just happen to pick the one that has. I found it purely based on Kickstarter searches, and did not realize he has a big Instagram following. Heck, I don't even use Instagram and I wanted to buy his book!
Of course, a big SM (social media) network does help. But I don't think it's necessary. What's absolutely necessary is a good body of work and the ability to showcase it.
We started a obscure charity movement before. None of us had a big SM presence, and we managed to raise more than $20k in a month.
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But many successful projects in Kickstarter don't have that kind of following. I guess I just happen to pick the one that has. I found it purely based on Kickstarter searches, and did not realize he has a big Instagram following. Heck, I don't even use Instagram and I wanted to buy his book!
Of course, a big SM (social media) network does help. But I don't think it's necessary. What's absolutely necessary is a good body of work and the ability to showcase it.
We started a obscure charity movement before. None of us had a big SM presence, and we managed to raise more than $20k in a month.
So you think it is possible to have success on kickstarter without a social media presence. Frankly, I don't know. Maybe you are right and all it takes to manage a successful kickstarter campaign is to have a good video to showcase one's work, which should be quite doable for anyone.
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So you think it is possible to have success on kickstarter without a social media presence. Frankly, I don't know. Maybe you are right and all it takes to manage a successful kickstarter campaign is to have a good video to showcase one's work, which should be quite doable for anyone.
I think so. A slick video is a must. Social media campaign helps of course. It's all part of the standard modern day marketing practice.
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Yes indeed, and that's not taking into account the mental strain of dealing with all of those people!
LuLa is apparently one of the better places in which to browse, and it doesn't take long to realise that even here, on this little island of semi-sanity, there are folks who feel obliged to switch off other folks!
Imagine the life one would lead having to try and be all things to all men! I say 'men' because I imagine that women, in general, have better ways of spending their time than in a world of fantasy.
You are right: trying to be all things to all men is impossible. Fortunately, Instagram or blogs have a built-in asymmetry: there is the poster and the followers. The followers cannot really disagree.
Take the example of Ming Thein. The blog presents him as a printing guru. Would you go to this blog and post comments that his claims of "super resolution" are, at best, unfounded? Or even post comments that you also know how to run a printer? That would be futile, you would be torn to pieces by all the other followers who came to read the words of the guru.
So being in that position is probably not very tiring once you have enough followers, because nobody can really disagree with you.